Creating Great Video Content

You’ve bought your equipment and set up your studio. You read the manuals and have played with the gear and software. Finally, it’s time to take on your first meaningful project. If you are feeling a wee bit overwhelmed, then join the club. No, you haven’t bit off more than you can chew. Fortunately, you found this roadmap to help you navigate the path ahead.

Video marketing is a lot like regular content marketing, so you will recognize the steps ahead.

Step One – Selecting a Content Subject

The first step is selecting a topic. It should be something that your audience would like to know about that is the biggest conversation maker in the target industry right now. This requires that you do some research talking to industry insiders to find where the buzz is and what the pain points are. The more you understand, the more compelling your content will be.

Other ideas for content topics could come from social media conversations, questions, and replies. Perhaps send a survey to your users, subscribers or followers, asking multiple questions. Check out the Frequently Asked Questions portion of your website and your direct competitors. Talk to your product support group about what they see the most of from customers. Lastly, you could do a Twitter hashtag search of things relevant and meaningful to your brand.

Step Two – Create the Content

There are three goals to keep in mind throughout the video creation process. These are:

To demonstrate your knowledge of the topic as an authority to help build your position as a thought leader in the community.

To provide helpful, useful and timely information that will help to solve a problem common to your industry.

To use storytelling, emotion and enthusiasm as your tools for the project.

I subscribe to the old adage, “Fail to plan, plan to fail.” Start creating your content by outlining the bigger picture of what happens when. Review it with your team to assure that you haven’t missed a step. Next break down each step of the process for what will happen when, so you have a logical picture of the entire story and process. This will allow you to stay on track through each and every step of the story. Prepare titles, slides and scripts in advance to be ready for when they are required.

Selecting your intro, outro and background music is important as music interjects emotion into the story. Our goal is to instill emotions such as inspiration, exhilaration, happiness, amazement, warmth and hilarity. Building positive emotions such these will compel the audience to want to share the video with their friends and associates. Music plays a big role in videos going viral.

Step Three – The Rehersal

By now, you are rearing to go, and you can’t wait to play with all the cool toys in the studio. Not yet, but soon! I would highly recommend a few walk-throughs, because practice makes perfect. Have your all your components ready to simulate a real shoot. This is like a ship. The hardest part is launching it and docking it. The rest is smooth sailing.

Assemble your crew and start from the beginning of your outline. Cue up the music, roll in the graphics and give the take to the introduction. Move through the entire script until you cue up the outro credits and music and they have resolved into black. This is not as easy as you expected, eh? When you finally are adept at doing this seamlessly, it is time to capture it on tape.

The first one probably will not come out perfect, even after practicing. But it will serve a good purpose as you ask your team and your department to view it and offer their feedback. This will allow you to catch things that you couldn’t see. Watch it several times to check for:

The audio levels throughout. Are the voices too hot or too low?

Is the background music too loud and covering the spoken portions?

Does the music fade properly at the end of the intros and beginning of the outros?

Can any background noise be heard that should be there? Lapel mics pick up even the rustle of clothing. Crew members in advertently coughing, etc.

Are there any shadows behind the guests on camera?

Is there any glare coming off the guests face or glasses?

Do the graphics appear when they are supposed to and where they are supposed to be.

Are the graphics colors bleeding into the picture? Avoid using red as it is famous for bleeding beyond the text itself.

Check out the surrounding area for things that should not be there, like equipment or bags, purses, etc. in the viewing area.

Step Four – The Shoot

After addressing the issues uncovered in the rehearsal shoot, proceed with creating and capturing the final product. Break a leg! Review the finished product the same way you reviewed the rehearsal shoot.

Step Five – Distribution

Like any other piece of content, spread it out to various outlets to be seen, including YouTube.com. Be sure to add it to your content library on your company website, as well. For seven websites you can post your video content on at no charge, click here.

Step Six – Measuring Your Success

You will need to set some KPI’s to measure your content’s success. This will help justify all the “fun” you are having creating videos to your boss and their bosses. The best indicators would be:

Total number of views – shows how many people have seen it.

Watch time that the video has accumulated – shows if people are “X”ing out of it after a few seconds or are they watching it in its entirety.

Click-throughs are you getting to your website

Number of new subscribers being generated.

Ultimately, the number of shares by the audience. If they like it, they’ll share it.

Gerry Nason is a Senior Content Copywriter for HiP B2B. He also has extensive experience with generating high quality executive leads. Gerry worked for six years as the Producer & Director of a weekly music show, appearing on cable access TV in New England. During those six years, In Tune won 18 awards for video excellence.